← Voices of Search // A Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Content Marketing Podcast
Voices of Search // A Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Content Marketing Podcast
How AI Search Is Changing The SEO Industry
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- [00:00]
Tyson Stockton
The Voices of Search Podcast is a proud member of the I Hear Everything Podcast network. Looking to launch or scale your podcast, I Hear Everything delivers podcast production, growth and monetization solutions that transform your words into profit. Ready to give your brand a voice then visit iheareverything.com welcome to the Voices of Search Podcast. A member of the I Hear Everything Podcast network, ready to expedite your company's organic growth efforts. Sit back, relax, and get ready for your daily dose of search engine optimization wisdom. Here's today's host of the Voices of Search podcast, Tyson Stockton.
- [00:43]
Hey, what's going on? My name is Tyson from Previsible IO, and joining me today is Michael Buckabee, who's the co founder at Noah Toa, which discovers ranking opportunities for brands within AI services like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini, which is essential for enhancing their online presence and engagement. Yesterday, Michael and I talked about why Google decided that all search is AI search. And today we're continuing the conversation by discussing how AI search is changing the SEO industry. So with that, here's my conversation with Michael Buckbee, co founder at Noah Toa. Michael, welcome back.
- [01:22]
Michael Buckbee
Hey, thanks for having me back.
- [01:23]
Tyson Stockton
No, yesterday, like, we were really kind of just diving into the world and the landscape of AI search tactics strategies and just kind of how it's starting to play out. And we tease the listeners a little bit on how maybe this is changing our industry or profession. And I'd like to dive in a little bit more today, kind of what this means for us as practitioners or of SEOs. Like, should we be scared of it? Is it an opportunity for us? So I'd love kind of, I guess, first just to get your take on how kind of you've been advocating for other SEOs to be thinking about this shift in our landscape.
- [02:08]
Michael Buckbee
Sure. Something I've always observed about the best marketers and the best SEOs is they're very empathetic. And so much of that is really having skills around divining what's the true search intent that's happening. And you know, with that, you're then able to write much better. You're able to, like, write to a Persona. You're able to think about what other questions would they have? What else can we answer? Answer. And I think we need to take all of those skills and sort of flip them up one level to think a little bit more about task intent instead of just purely search intent, where there is a skill we all have, especially in the SEO industry, of course, which is abstraction that There's a problem and we do this mental math to abstract out. Oh, here's how I need to ask about this. I then make a search for that, then I take those results and I pull them back together to get an answer from three or four different sites. And I basically just did an AI overview in my head, you know, and more and more of what we're going to see is that search has a task component to it where it's a little bit beyond just getting an answer that I'm trying to get an answer that I'm trying to apply it to something. And I think there's a lot of opportunities there. And one of the things, you know, as a software developer, I've always found, you know, doing software development is a superpower in the marketing space. Able to, you know, get a lot more different things done and to think about stuff. And now I don't think it's such a superpower anymore because the AI tools are so good at helping with software development that now I think like every SEO has the capability of doing 80% of what I could do before. And again, I think that opens up a lot of opportunities. Yesterday we spoke about HubSpot and maybe some of the smart changes they're doing. A real interesting thing to do is to look at the footer of their website, which is traditionally one of those like, oh, this is where we can really, you know, tweak and optimize our on page SEO. And what's in their footer are tools. It's not really links to content, it is links to tools to figure out different things, to, you know, figure out where you stand, to help you with tasks. And there is so much opportunity for that across so many different industries to publish and do those things. And you know, I call that content engineering instead of just content marketing that, you know, you're building stuff.
- [04:40]
Tyson Stockton
Yeah, I think that totally makes sense. And I mean it reminds me a little bit of our conversation yesterday in the sense where we were talking, you know, strategy, tactics. It feels like too like how the SEO approaches the job has a similar kind of like split where there's the application of the tools and how you're thinking about, you know, people interacting with your product, brand, whatever it is. But it feels like also there's this opportunity or this like growing opportunity with the general public awareness of this. And it's almost like to me it feels like it's shedding a little more light on the industry and SEO, where it's like even just in my outside of work and Search, like friend group. It's like I'm getting questions from people that I never have talked to SEO about that are asking me questions about it and things like that. So it's like to me there's also just this like opportunity of the growing awareness and attention that kind of can, hopefully more SEOs can get a seat at the table within the organization. And as far as like spending a lot of time and focus in this emerging kind of like sector, would you have any recommendations for like SEOs out there as far as like how maybe they should think about the positioning within the organization or how they should be kind of preparing their self to engage in some of these conversations that might be coming down from upper management?
- [06:17]
Michael Buckbee
Yeah, I think the biggest one is to prepare your C suite and prepare, you know, your clients for a potential drop in traffic. An interesting thing when we were starting Noah Toa is the people that were the most interested in working with us were not the ones that had the best like analytics and attribution suites. It was the people that had post purchase surveys. Post purchase surveys. You know, just the emails where it's like, hey, how'd you hear about us? Like literally founders just send that out and they just take it as qualitative data. And our first customers were the people that had those. And they're like, mike, I really gotta talk to you because every day I hear someone replies with chat GPT. And this was not the case a month ago. So we need to make sure we're doing the right stuff here. And it's a different way of thinking about attribution. I think attribution analytics have been getting darker and dimmer and darker for a long time and I don't see that ever getting better. And we'll just have to work around that.
- [07:24]
Tyson Stockton
I totally agree. It's like the KPIs that we use or traditionally have used to manage SEO within the organization has that need to evolve where it's like you can't be single threaded into just traffic. I think as an industry we've at least historically kind of shied away from the CRO piece where it's like, hey, yeah, we'll bring the users to the page and it's another team as far as what's going to happen with them. So I think like also that would be an element that's like, I feel like I've seen over the last few years getting closer and closer and you hear it coming up in more conversations of that overlap of like SEO and CRO, but I feel like too with this like the, the skill sets of an SEO or a good SEO of cur curiosity, like understanding of complex systems. Like, I feel like a lot of SEOs out there should be excited because it's like in a lot of ways like you've been training and kind of preparing to be well positioned to stay in front of the industry.
- [08:30]
Michael Buckbee
You know, I lived in the corporate world for a very long time and you know, it was a constant battle to try to get the writers that worked with me to be less creative because that's what SEO demanded for these top of funnel posts, which is like, like yeah, I know our customers don't really need to be told like what a firewall is because they're the chief Information security Officer at like a Fortune 100 company. But Google will not link to our site or think we're a topical authority on this subject if we don't have this article. And writing those articles is just soul crushing. And so if there's a reason to be happy in all of this, it's that for the mid and bottom funnel, it's a lot more storytelling, it's a lot more, hey, we're good for this sort of way. It's a lot more like trying to get a case study out. It's better to read, it's better to write. I think, you know, like we spoke about yesterday, it is something where there's a lot of cross functional value to the other marketing pursuits of, you know, product marketing, of sales, of support. All of those now have a bit of SEO in them. And you know, as an SEO, you need to learn a little bit more about them to have a better relationship with those groups. And I think, you know, the seat at the table for search, like true search, not just Google traffic optimization is just going to double or triple in the next couple years because of all these changes.
- [09:59]
Tyson Stockton
I think that last piece is really critical too that it's like we need to be positioning it as search general and not as much just Google because it's been, I mean in a lot of ways maybe like the easy answer, the easy explanation where it's like someone asks, what do you do? Oh, I help websites rank higher in Google. And it's like that answer is so limiting to I think where the opportunity is going. And so your point on thinking about search as a, you know, full spectrum data retrieval systems is something that's going to like really kind of broaden the horizon now, wrapping things up. I feel like throughout the conversations, you know, it's clear that you have an optimism towards this like, transformation, how things are evolving. And I think maybe I'd. I'd like to end it on. What would you say, like, excites you most about kind of this new chapter in our industry?
- [11:01]
Michael Buckbee
I think what excites me the most is that is the change, is that this is a very personal thing. I was a software developer for a long time and I sort of fell out of love with it. But the AI tooling and the ability to sort of take out so much of the cruft and the repetition and the bad parts of it and let me just focus on the creative end of it really just reignited my passion for it. And I feel the best use of AI in just all categories is like that where this sort of takes out all of that stuff I didn't want to do or that was holding me back and lets me really focus on the fun and interesting parts of it. And I feel like so much of that is what's happening in Search where now you can make a business case for why we need to write this interesting article, for why we need to build this. This very useful in a way that wasn't possible a year ago. And I think that's going to be good for individual SEOs careers. I think that's going to be good for the industry. I think that's going to be good for this profession.
- [12:06]
Tyson Stockton
I love that piece too, where I feel like that piece about focusing on the creativity also kind of gets at the crux of the state of the technology behind it. And I've been having multiple conversations with others outside of the industry where it's like, yeah, like one of the hardest things would be like true creativity. And like, that's going to be the areas that are going to be the hardest to replicate or come up with, like within the space. So your answer there, I feel like it just really leans into embracing kind of like, well, what are the strengths of these systems and what are the strengths of kind of like the human involvement and creativity being kind of at one of like the core human element sides to this.
- [12:50]
Michael Buckbee
Yeah, I really do enjoy talking to people. So my email is Mike Noah, toa.com I'm happy to get on a call with you, talk about SEO career stuff, talk about AI, talk about whatever. It was a pleasure coming on the show and I really appreciate it.
- [13:05]
Tyson Stockton
It was great. And appreciate it too. Well, that wraps up this episode of the Voice of Search podcast. Thanks again to Michael Buckbee from Noa Toa for joining us. And again, if you'd like to get in touch with Michael, you can find a link to his LinkedIn profile in the show notes. Or go on over and check out.
- [13:22]
Ben Jschapp
His website@noahtoa.com okay, thanks to Tyson Stockton, our guest host. If you'd like to get in touch with Tyson, you could find a link to his LinkedIn profile in our show Notes. You can contact him on Twitter, where his handle is TysonStockton. Or if your team is interested in SEO consulting or organizational education, you can always head to their company's website, which is Previsible IO that's P R E V I S I B L E I O Just one more link in our show Notes I'd like to tell you about. If you didn't have a chance to take notes while you were listening to this podcast, head over to voicesofsearch.com, where we have summaries of all of our episodes and contact information for our guests. You can also subscribe to our weekly newsletter, and you can even send us your topic suggestions or your marketing questions, which we'll answer live on our show. Of course, you can always reach out on social media. Our handle is Voices of search on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or you can contact me directly. My handle is Ben Jschapp B E N J S E and if you haven't subscribed yet and you want a daily stream of SEO and content marketing insights in your podcast feed, we're going to publish an episode every day during the work week, so hit that subscribe button in your podcast app and we'll be back in your feed tomorrow morning. All right, that's it for today. But until next time, remember the answers are always in the data.